Cause Of Ww2 Research Paper

What were the causes of WWII? How did the United States become involved? What were the end results of the war? Do you believe any measures could have been taken to avoid this war, explain?

World War II was arguably the largest and most destructive war in history. It shaped the world we live in today and its shadows can still be found. Battles were fought on multiple continents, the air, and the sea. The many facets of the war have been explored by scholars and students for over 65 years. The many causes, the results and the importance of the battles won or lost lies in the eyes of the author. It can easily be assumed that this war flared from the cinders of World War I, but complexity of it expands from there. Similar to WWI, there were many conflicting situations leading up to the war, (Treaty of Versailles, Hitler and Mussolini’s actions, and failure of appeasement and the League of Nations) but Germany’s invasion of Poland set the wheels in motion (parallel to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in WWI). This resulted in Britain and France declaring war on Germany in September 1939 (historyonthenet).
In spite of the support that the American government gave to Britain, Hitler refrained from declaring war on the United States.
Nevertheless, relations between Japan and the United States had become unfriendly and the outbreak of war in Europe stirred Japanese ambitions to take over Asia; they allied themselves with Germany and Italy (Kagan). On Sunday, December 7, 1941 Japan chose the risk of war as opposed to compliance. The air attack on Pearl Harbor thrust The United States into war without choice, demolishing a majority of the American fleet and many of its planes as well. The next day it became official when the United States and Britain declared war on Japan, resulting in Germany and Italy declaring war on the United
States. There were so many historic battles in this global war, too many to even attempt to evaluate accurately. Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Stalingrad, and Normandy were significant battles that turned the tides of war. The use of strategic bombing became a key detail of the war, resulting in the destruction of Hiroshima by an atomic bomb dropped by an American plane on August 6, 1945 (Kagan). Although the Holocaust was not a military conflict being fought on a battlefield, it resulted in the near-total destruction of the Jews of Europe. In a course taken at Carlow, Political Terrorism, I researched the Armenian Genocide that became a blueprint for Hitler’s dreams of Judenrein. He actually referred to it in one of his doctrines, speaking of the Ottoman Empire’s attempt to decimate the Armenian population and how easily it was overlooked by other societies. The Nazi assault on Jews eclipsed the Armenian Genocide by millions. Similar to instances of WWI, I do not believe that this war could have been completely avoided. The Treaty of Versailles forced the hands of the powers of Europe into a completely flawed situation; once it was signed it became inevitable that a second war would take place at some point. It formally ended WWI, but did little to address the unresolved issues and actually encouraged international distrust and resentment. Harsh economic conditions devastated millions of people around the globe; strong feelings of resentment and lack of accountability afflicted the disheartened citizens of the countries involved and overruled feelings of reason in much of the world. The first war was a turn of tides for powers on a global level, it made the reality of destruction and death one that could not be avoided, but fed the greed and anger of overconfident powers…and Hitler bit that hook.
Works Cited http://www.historyonthenet.com/WW2/causes.htm Kagan, Donald, et al.The Western Heritage.Person, 2013. 907-929
Sturgeon, Alison. World War II : The Definitive Visual History: From Blitzkrieg To The Atom Bomb. London: DK Pub, 2009. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 31 July 2013.